Anthere wrote: I agree, but it's different from Nupedia in that they've got tons more resources than Nupedia did. Still, I don't see encarta becoming the largest encyclopedia in the world, since there is little reason for people to contribute. It doesn't even seem like they give attribution (do they? If so, where?). I don't think that there will be dedicated editors like there are on Wikipedia, and like there were on Nupedia, since encarta is completely for profit- they're in it for the money and NOT for providing free access to "the sum of all human knowledge." There might be some casual editors who, upon finding something that wasn't previously there, will submit it (eg. if somebody died). There is little reason I see for anybody going on the site for the purpose of improving it. While it will help keep the encyclopedia more up-to-date, I doubt it will ever become nearly as popular as Wikipedia is. Blog: http://frazzydee.ca -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS d? s:- a--- C+++ UL++ P+ L+ E---- W++ N+ o+ K+ w+ O? M-- V? PS++ PE Y PGP++ t 5-- X+ R tv b++ DI++ D+ G++ e- h! !r !z ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

David Gerard wrote: [[Template:Encarta]] (to be placed on User_talk: pages) Dear contributor, Wikipedia is a two-bit piece of &@!#. Nobody reads it. Since you know *the truth* about {{{1}}}, please stop wasting your time here. Try [[Encarta Wiki]] instead. Thanks, ~~~~ Oh, and: [[Template:Uncyclopedia]] (to be placed on User_talk: pages) Dear contributor, Since Wikipedians are far too stupid to understand the breeding habits of dust bunnies, I suggest you try [[Uncyclopedia]] instead. The editors there will be a lot more receptive to your vast wealth of knowledge. Thanks, ~~~~ -- Alphax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis

I disagree. I've found most people to be kind and helpful. Something like Wikipedia tends to draw people of a different intellectual and moral level than most other environments, and I think that a lot of editors have come to value that. If you think that there are serious problems with Wikipedia, there's nothing stopping you from starting another wiki encyclopedia with Wikipedia's content since everything is GFDL'd. And the way encarta works, it doesn't look like it'll form a strong community like there is at Wikipedia. Sure there are a couple of people who've ticked me off here, but you're bound to not get along with some people in a place with hundreds of thousands of people. -- Blog: http://frazzydee.ca -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS d? s:- a--- C+++ UL++ P+ L+ E---- W++ N+ o+ K+ w+ O? M-- V? PS++ PE Y PGP++ t 5-- X+ R tv b++ DI++ D+ G++ e- h! !r !z ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ Stirling Newberry wrote:

Stirling Newberry wrote: Amen. For a serious encyclopedia, it should be just as important to track the knowledge level of the editing, and my unscientific observation is that expert-level participation has been flat at best, even though the number of editors has been increasing. For instance, we seem to have averaged only about one serious ichthyology active at any one time during the past two years. So we get a situation where there is no one writing about fish physiology, but hey, we have a "shark template". I don't have anything against obscure football clubs or train stations, and have added my own share of trivia, but I could easily see experts flocking to improve Encarta because the process is friendlier to them, while WP becomes known as the preserve of soccer hooligans and trainspotters. :-) Stan

For me, the important question is: how do we prevent Wikipedia from becoming an "increasingly hostile environment". My own view is that we should trust the ArbCom to rid us more quickly of poisonous personalities. Of course this is non-trivial, etc. But we really do put up with an astounding amount of absurd behavior in the name of openness. --Jimbo

I think that the English Wikipedia is already a very hostile environment, due in no small part to certain gung-ho admins who do not assume good faith on the part of newbies. When I first came here, I could've vandalised 40 pages in a row and somebody would've sent me a nice warning message, welcoming me to Wikipedia in the process and encouraging me to log in. Not that I did that, but the environment at that time was such that such a thing doesn't seem unbelievable. People were always at least somewhat nice to each other. But now, if anybody asks any question about an edit, you (meaning everybody, or at least many people if not most) just tell them "I am right. Shut up and bugger off." (not exactly; you give them a somewhat more polite response but give them the impression that you are not willing to have an academic discussion about it). It's especially harmful when people say "I'm reverting this." or "Your changes are unacceptable." or "Leave this page alone.", or other things that make them sound like a parent scolding their child (and in many cases, it gets more abusive). There is too much voting and too little simple attempts to reach a consensus, nobody is willing to compromise, and in addition to such helpful-but-harmful utilities as mediators, we now have the ArbCom (in my view, while they have help weed some bad people out, they have also caused a lot of trouble, not intentionally though), bureaucrats (a mean, pompous, or abusive bureaucrat is 10 times worse than a bad sysop), and worst of all the AMA (in my view, that organisation should be forcefully disbanded and anybody who tries to start it up again should be shot - note that I personally have not made use of them, nor have I had a dispute with anybody that did, but so far as I can tell they just make things worse for everybody). I think quickpolls were better. Sure, they were tantamount to mob rule, but that was that and it was less toxic to the community, at least in my view. People do not really think about proposals or ideas that they don't like a whole lot - they just say "no" without thinking about it or reading further. There are few moderates anymore. Everybody believes that their POV is NPOV, or else their "NPOV" is at least somewhat POV. Every case the ArbCom handles, every person to seek an advocate, every post to a talkpage that isn't nice and polite, all of this contributes to sending the en.wikipedia community from the purgatory it's in now to the residence of one Ms Helen A. Hampbaskytt. Is there anything that can be done to keep the community out of the paws of vile Ms Hampbaskytt? I honestly don't know. Maybe we should create a new Wikipedia for a language called "enGlish" but that's really the same as English, and ban anybody who is anything but nice and courteous. Mark On 4/14/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:

On 4/17/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Indeed. Some basic social-software features that let users describe themselves and set up networks of friends and project-collaborators, and let others view those connections, would actually have a *purpose* on a project like Wikipedia, just as the social aspects of wiki come to have a real purpose beyond social experimenting and procrastination. -- +sj+

On 4/19/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: When I say "networks" and "connections" I mean something that supports viewing actual networks and connection graphs or quickly aggregated data from some natural subnetwork, like "all people within 2 connections from me" or "everyone working with james on a project who is also working with me on a project" ; or an automatic list of "everyone who shares these hobbies/locations" rather than having to manually update and search a hundred different lists when you want to find that information. -- +sj+ _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]

Tony Sidaway wrote: Well, it's just an idea right now, but maybe the original poster was talking about [[Wikipedia:Baseline revision]]s? Blog: http://frazzydee.ca -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS d? s:- a--- C+++ UL++ P+ L+ E---- W++ N+ o+ K+ w+ O? M-- V? PS++ PE Y PGP++ t 5-- X+ R tv b++ DI++ D+ G++ e- h! !r !z ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Alphax wrote: A couple of attempts at contributing (perfectly reasonable) test edits to Encarta have resulted in nothing at all happening to the articles in question. I'm not impressed. The whole experience is extraordinarily lacking in incentive for Encarta contributors, who will effectively see a brick wall, if my experience is anything to go by. Combined with the fact that it will dawn on them that all they are doing is enriching Microsoft, with nothing back in return, this is unlikely to gain a loyal user community. Has anyone observed _any_ Encarta user edits actually becoming visible? -- Neil

On 4/15/05, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: Timwi, certainly you can see why users will not get that "rush" that Wikipedia is famous for and gets people hooked. Encarta Feedback doesn't inspire the same sense of reward of a commons-based peer production site like WP. So what type of gratification does it provide? You don't have to be MS-hostile to have those feelings. Problem is, in [[Coase's Penguin]], Yochai Benkler identified the problem as the [[jalt]], or the jealousy/altruism factor. Why should folks donate their own free time and effort to enrich the pockets of not only a corporation, but perhaps one of the most dominant and profitable ones in the history of American business, with little to no reward for themselves? If Encarta had any of the following features or incentives, it might be a more balanced relationship and provide a social or hedonic reward. - Notification of acceptance of edits - Attribution/credit for contributor edits - Community site for discussing articles - Free Encarta subscription after ''n'' number of accepted contributions They currently do not do any of them. The five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, acceptance) have been boiled down into two for Microsoft - "embrace and extend." They've officially embraced a small part of the wiki model. Stay tuned for the "extend." But if their sentiment about [[CBPP]] is anything like their treatment of open source software, this will be a half-hearted "me too" approach. -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

FYI, something I just found on the Encarta Feedback FAQ, that might be of interest: --- How are my suggested edits researched? Graduate students at the University of Washington Information School are fact-checking all proposed changes to Encarta. They are trained in research and passionate about corroborating facts. Stay tuned for possible plans to expand our pool of researchers to the Encarta community. --- Interestingly, donors to the school include: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Corbis Corporation Microsoft Corporation http://www.ischool.washington.edu/events/docs/newsletter-fall-04.pdf -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

"Andrew Lih" <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:2ed171fb05041420024e2114eb@mail.gmail.com... Makes you wonder where *they* do their research. -- Phil Suddenly struck by the possible delicious irony of Encarta's checkers using Wikipedia...yeah, unlikely, I know, but we can dream about it ;-)

And /where/ they check it. I am a student myself, and I check virtually everything on Wikipedia, even things concerning my study :-) . Wouter _________________________________________________________________ Speel online games via MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/

Jimmy Wales wrote: This could be a good opportunity for a Seattle meetup. That would draw Wikipedians from Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. Ec

On 4/15/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Neat. Is there a date set? Of course there are lots of other information schools out there; perhaps none as focused as this one; but it would be interesting to compare their curriculum with that of other information management programs teach. I would love to think that this school is going to be on the forefront of founding a true study of information itself (generation, propagation, creativity, evolution, analysis & verification), independent of computers and the unfortunately named field of "information technology." +sj+

Fred Bauder said: In honor of this discovery, I decree that the word shall be renamed to "Fredi". Thus Wikipedia becomes Fredipedia.

Rowan Collins wrote: Rowpedia! Appropriately describes the atmosphere on the talk pages of some controversial articles.

Stuart, do you know of a place to get free content movie information? There are lots of older movies we have nothing on; it would be useful to snarf up an old database that's public domain. On 4/15/05, Stuart Orford <sjorford(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- +sj+

Stuart Orford wrote: Very good example -- I can relate to your experiences, and I fully agree. But there is no on-going controversy about movie databases in the way there is about encyclopedias. It seems to be a deeply-entrenched belief in people that controlled expert review is the only way information can be accurate (this applies to IMDb as well as encyclopedias), but they additionally perceive the accuracy of an encyclopedia as being of paramount importance (the word "encyclopedia" seems to ring this particular bell in many people). Hence everybody's stereotypical reaction when they first hear of Wikipedia, "That'll never work!". Also, to make this clear: I do not believe that Encarta will attract more contributors than Wikipedia. Quite to the contrary. What I'm talking about is the general public view of the resulting encyclopedia. For a long time, it has been one of Wikipedia's selling points to say, "If you find a mistake you can correct it yourself!" Now, the general reply to that will be, "Yawn. You can do that with Encarta too." Heh. I know what you mean. But I don't think the editors "change edits in arbitrary ways" -- I think it's more likely that their processing of the information takes *even* longer than you think, and the information you suggested was actually suggested by someone else long before you, and they posted his version. :) I completely agree. But the "community factor" doesn't help the reputation outside the community. Timwi